By MELANIE MCFARLAND, P-I TELEVISION CRITIC

Published 10:00 pm, Thursday, June 7, 2007

At some point, people who make important decisions in entertainment will realize they need to hold those we perceive as geniuses to the same standards as garden variety mortals.

To put it another way, remember that scene in "Shine" when piano prodigy David Helfgott's father realized his son had been in the bath for an unusually long time? He walked in to discover his musical genius had defecated in the tub.

Now, there are rather tragic reasons as to why that happened, but the point is that the greatest of minds have been responsible for spectacularly regrettable mistakes. That is what we have in David Milch's new series "John From Cincinnati," a fresh floater in HBO's bathwater.

Milch gave us "Deadwood," the closest inheritor to Shakespeare likely to ever grace our televisions. Milch is also flighty and a touch wacky. He abandoned his Western before it was done, throwing the faithful a puny chicken bone by promising to wrap up everything in two features and four hours.

A series that brilliant deserved more than something slapped on with all the care of a child playing "Pin the Tail on the Donkey." No matter. Milch had his heart set on making a series steeped in surf noir, he said, inspired by the novels of Kem Nunn. And string theory. And a whole lot of other tripe that nobody can explain.

Instead of echoing the rest of us when we said, "Who?" and "What?" HBO replied with, "Ooh!" and let Milch go wild. HBO can do that because it's HBO, which automatically lends an air of sophistication to anything.

Meanwhile, anyone whose mother or teacher read fairy tales to them realizes that this is the kind of thing that leads to naked emperors sauntering down the middle of the street.

That opening scatological reference wasn't just throwaway humor by the way. A significant portion of one episode is devoted to the titular character's obsession with "dumping out," a concept he doesn't really understand because -- OK, Dr. Jones, hold on to your potatoes! -- he's obviously not quite human.

Hard to say what John Monad (Austin Nichols) is. He could be an extraordinary idiot who speaks in a string of near non sequiturs cobbled together from things people say to him and has a talent for producing anything a person needs from the pockets of his pants. He might be an alien or an escapee from David Blaine's magical laboratory. He's utterly innocent in the ways of the world, reminding us on occasion that some things he knows and some things he doesn't. Who cares? Everything John says and does is cutesy, an act that does not take long to wear out its welcome.

Anyway, soon after his arrival in Imperial Beach, a rundown coastal burg a few miles from the Mexican border, strange things start to happen to a family of surfing legends wiped out by fate, the Yosts.

Mitch Yost (Bruce Greenwood) revolutionized the sport but became a recluse after competition crippled him. His son, Butchie (Brian Van Holt), followed in his footsteps but tumbled into drug addiction, leading Mitch to do everything in his power to keep Butchie's 13-year-old son, Shaun (Greyson Fletcher), from going pro.

But Shaun shows signs of being greater than either of them, something grandmother Cissy (Rebecca De Mornay) doesn't want to ignore. His talent leads agents like Butch's old rep, Linc Stark (Luke Perry), to start sniffing around, too.

And soon after meeting the guy, Mitch discovers he can levitate a few inches off the ground.

The weird crew surrounding the Yosts, including Bill (Ed O'Neill) a reclusive ex-cop surrounded by parrots; Barry (Matt Winston) the lottery winner with a ridiculously flowery vocabulary; and Ramon (Luis Guzman) the soft-spoken motel manager; have closets stuffed with quirks lifted straight out of a "Writing for Cable" textbook.

The only thing a person can be certain of after watching "John From Cincinnati" is this: Any die-hard "Deadwood" fan interested in keeping the veins in his forehead intact should not bother with it. Watching it will only make you want to hurt your television, and it's unkind and quite expensive to punish the messenger so harshly.

And the rest of us? Well, a few elements in the first three episodes are intriguing. Some part of your brain might be tempted to stick around to see what John's deal is, mesmerized by the mystery his existence poses, if there is indeed a mystery or Greater Meaning at the heart of this as opposed to the puddle of what-the-pho that it appears to be after a first pass.

It is not even clear that there's a legitimate television series percolating in "John From Cincinnati." If you're going to give it a shot, though, bring an open mind -- so open your brain is on the verge of tumbling out, preferably -- along with plenty of patience and a notebook to help decipher the sun-kissed enigma you're going to witness.